Counterblow
by UntoldStories113
Summary: It would be so easy to kill him. (Post-MI, Monsters Inc spoilers)


**Timeline note:** Set a few months after Monsters Inc.

**Rating:** T for Randall's thoughts.

* * *

It had taken him months to get to another door.

No, wait, scratch that. Finding the nearest congregation of humans and picking a snotty brat's room to hide in had taken about half a day, and it would have been less than that if he had not secluded himself from the humans' society so thoroughly. _Healing_ had taken him months. That had had to be expected, though - after that fury with her shovel had beat him up with the force of an entire football team, he was amazed he was even still alive. He was not even entirely sure how he had made it out of the house, or what they called a house anyway. His body had been so completely covered in cuts and bruises that he had been convinced he would die from infection eventually.

But as much as he wanted to chalk it up to a murder attempt on Wazowski and Sullivan's parts, those two were way too dumb to have known beforehand what he would have to face on the other side. Sullivan especially had never been able to anticipate humans' actions and reactions. He just came in, roared, and left. The air-headed dropout did not have Randall's sophisticated style.

Which, of course, made it all the more infuriating that he had been number one for so long.

But today was the day Randall would finally, _finally_ get his revenge. Months of being on the run from those creatures, eating insects and berries, trying in vain to adapt his poikilothermic physiology to the rapid changes in temperature between days and nights in this world… today, it would all pay off. Today, he would get back at those two for butting into his plans. He had _not_ spent all those off hours perfecting his invention just to have dumbbells like them make it all meaningless. This was a mere setback, and he was prepared to finally reach that goal he had pursued for so long.

At least his scar tissue, he had been amazed to discover, was just as capable of camouflage as his normal skin was, so here he was, clinging to the wall in some brat's bedroom and waiting for a Scarer to appear. And a Scarer _would_ appear eventually, that much was a given. There was no _way_ Waternoose could have switched to Scream Extractors in just a few months. Scratch that, the guy could not have done it in several _years_, he did not even _understand_ the technology.

Now that he thought about it, whoever was assigned to this kid, what was _taking_ them so long? It had gone to bed an _hour_ ago! Yeah, most of his colleagues were maddeningly incompetent, but this was a bit much.

But as intensely as he stared at the closet door, it would not open, so he resigned himself to at least a few more hours of mindless waiting, if not several nights in a row. He had no idea about this kid's Scare Schedule. How could he? Clairvoyance was one of the few talents he did _not_ possess. Well, not that he had ever wanted it, of course.

He would have to get to the ground eventually, though; clinging to the wall was difficult in his current state. He hoped he would not wake the kid with the rumbling of his stomach.

He had never been good at patience. As long as he actually had a chance to work towards some goal, sure, that was great, but just idly sitting around waiting for something to come? That was a serious waste of time. He was actually hoping that Waternoose had not gotten rid of those two idiots, unlikely as it was; he very much wanted to do that himself. And the kid that was responsible for this, while he was at it. Oh, he would see to it that it was scared of him, all right. It would have nightmares well into its adult life!

A small flash of light made him snap his head around, and sure enough, there was a faint glow emanating from the gaps between the closet door and its frame.

Randall rolled his eyes. Finally! Now he just had to get through that door and find Waternoose. Or maybe he would dispose of Sullivan and Wazowski _first_; that would _certainly_ prove to Waternoose that there was no _way_ they could keep up with him. Relying on the kid to do the work for them had just been cheating.

He was halfway down the wall, but stopped dead in his tracks when the door fully opened to reveal…

Fungus?!

For a moment, Randall was sure he was seeing things. The Shovel Witch must have hit him harder than he had originally assumed. He had known, of course, that replacing him must have been difficult, if not downright impossible, but if they were sending _Fungus_, they must be really desperate.

So astonished was he by this turn of events that he completely forgot he had wanted to slip through the door until it was too late. It _was_ Fungus, though, and while he did have the sense to close the door behind himself, he seemed to make no attempt to be silent about crossing the small distance to the kid's bed.

Randall was not surprised. Fungus was even less scary than that little, one-eyed nitwit. Stealth had never been one of his strong points. Not that he _had_ any strong points, mind you.

A grin crept onto Randall's face. Well, this would certainly be entertaining. He could not wait to see what the idiot would do once the kid became aware of his presence. So he watched in satisfaction while Fungus adjusted some sort of backpack he was carrying and then positioned himself next to the head of the bed, and sure enough, his clumsy sneaking was rewarded with the kid jerking awake, turning on a lamp on its nightstand, and… squeaking in delight and clapping its hands.

Randall resisted the urge to rub his eyes.

"Hey, little one!" Fungus exclaimed in a tone that Randall might have used on a dog, had he been fond of animals. "Hope you didn't miss me _too_ much!"

The kid gave a little, gurgling laugh and reached out its tiny hands for the monster it should logically have been afraid of. But then, this was _Fungus_.

At least he was smart enough to keep well out of its reach. Instead of letting it touch him, he started making faces and dumb sounds in a rather obvious attempt to make it laugh. Not that there was anything funny about it; in fact, Randall felt more like throwing up than anything else. The kid seemed to love it, though. Apparently, it was not one for deep and meaningful. But then, it seemed to know Fungus, so it could not have been expecting much.

This went on for a few more minutes in which Randall discovered that the backpack contained a small number of tools to help Fungus make even more of a fool of himself. There were things such as several glove puppets, a couple of rings for juggling, and an astonishingly _hideous_ set of glasses with two fake noses and mustaches. During it all, Randall was not quite sure if it was he who had lost his mind or Fungus. But, thinking about it, it was probably Fungus.

A few minutes later, the kid was shrieking with laughter so loudly that Randall was amazed its parents had not shown up yet, and apparently, that reaction was exactly what Fungus had wanted, for he packed his stuff away now, bade the kid goodbye, and went back the way he had come. Randall braced himself, and without even the slightest effort, he made it through the door and, _finally_, back into his own world without ever being noticed.

Except that this could not be his world. What he had just entered was a flurry of brightness and noise and activity and _colors_ - horrible, clashing colors! - that it did not even remotely resemble a Scare Floor. For a moment, he was sure his idiot assistant had taken the wrong door. How thick did one have to be to get lost on the way out of a kid's bedroom? There was no way _this_ was his company, was it?

But then he recognized the Door Stations, and the workplaces… the skylights…

Had Randall not been invisible already, he would probably have disappeared from the shock.

It dawned on him that this was indeed Monsters Inc - or what was _left_ of it after, by the looks of it, it had been hit by a nuclear confetti bomb. The idiocy he had just witnessed should have tipped him off on this, but how could he expect _Scarers_, graceful, dignified Scarers, to stoop this low?

But the people around him were not Scarers, he suddenly realized. Most of these actually were just assistants. Had there been a mutiny or something?

Oh, no, wait, Lanky Schmidt had just zoomed by on a unicycle. So either the Scarers were being enslaved or they were actually okay with this. Somehow, the former seemed more likely, or why else would they put up with the balloons and the garlands saying "THINK FUNNY" and the "smile" stickers on the workplaces and… for crying out loud, there was a giant, plastic _clown_ sitting in one corner!

"Hey, Fungus, Fungus!" someone was calling out. Still in something of a daze, Randall turned his head to watch the exchange, desperate for confirmation that _someone_ was still in possession of his own sanity here.

Fungus was just shrugging off his backpack to place it onto Randall's desk - was that _his_ desk now? The nerve! "Hey, Claws, what is it?"

Claws Ward, not the scariest fellow on the planet but a Scarer nonetheless, was waving at Fungus as if about to divulge the secret of the universe. "Why did the comedian cross the road?"

Smiling, Fungus pulled the rings out of his backpack and started absently juggling them. "Dunno, why?"

Ward almost could not solve the riddle through his own ludicrous guffawing. "He fancied some chicken!"

Fungus doubled over in a giggling fit so suddenly that he dropped most of his rings onto his own head. In fact, several of the monsters around them had broken into insane laughter. Dear heavens, they were _laughing_! That kid had been bad enough, but actual sentient beings _should_ know better than to find that kind of lunacy funny.

Randall closed his eyes in despair. He had left these idiots alone for just a few months, and they had all gone bonkers in the meantime.

Carefully, slowly, he backed away from the group in front of him - maybe this condition was contagious or something! - until he slipped on the stupid confetti on the ground and almost crashed into someone. He regained his balance in time, though; if he hit someone unexpectedly, he would take on their colors and textures and then everyone would be able to see him. He needed to be more careful. Well, but it was not his fault that his colleagues were so dumb that it was distracting!

Turning around, he found that the one he had just narrowly missed was Bob Peterson's assistant who was balancing several spinning plates on long sticks. Grinning, Randall reached out and poked one of the sticks, just barely, and watched in satisfaction as immediately, the entire construction came crashing down on the showoff.

"Frank!"

"Oh my gosh, are you all right?"

Hastily, Randall climbed one of the doors and stuck to the top of the clamp holding it in place so that no one could trample him in the sudden commotion.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" Peterson's assistant kept telling them, even though he was bleeding from several gashes, most likely caused by china fragments, and repeatedly failed in getting up from the ground again.

"That doesn't _look_ fine, Frank!"

Randall's head snapped up. He would be able to make out _that_ voice in a crowd of several hundred people. It was Sullivan. It had to be.

And sure enough, the polka-dotted doofus had appeared out of nowhere and was currently kneeling next to Peterson's assistant, babbling something about having the receptionist call an ambulance. For a moment, Randall was sure he had come out of one of the doors, but then he saw the ugly tie the guy was wearing and the clipboard with quota reports he was holding, and his mind made the connection.

Sullivan was the one _responsible_ for all this!

Ah, _that_ explained it. Of course the company would go down the drain if they placed _Sullivan_ in charge of it!

Randall knew, of course, that he was jumping to conclusions, but there was no way _Waternoose_ had allowed this tomfoolery, and Sullivan actually struck him as thick enough to go through with this kind of thing. It seemed as if Waternoose was gone - either the CDA had him or he had ended up in the human world as well, and in the latter case, the humans had probably killed him by now; he did not seem like a survival type of guy. Oh, well, it was not as if Randall would miss him.

His suspicions were confirmed when Sullivan _ordered_ Peterson's assistant to the reception desk and sent a few others with him for support. Randall would bet anything that he immensely enjoyed bossing people around; he had always loved attention.

Suddenly, Randall remembered his actual purpose. He had wanted to get rid of Sullivan and Wazowski - and now that he thought about it, where _was_ that loud-mouthed blockhead? The general craziness of this unrecognizable Scare Floor seemed like the sort of thing he would be into, being crazy himself and all, so he was probably still working at this company, right? It would be a pain to track him down in this large a city, and he was _not_ worth the effort.

"Hey, Sul, what's with the commotion?"

Ah, speak of the devil. Turning around, Randall saw the dimwit in the process of closing a door behind himself, which he almost messed up on due to having his hands full with a microphone and stool.

So Sullivan was the CEO now while Wazowski was a - what did these numbskulls call themselves? Comedians?

In a twisted way, this made sense to him. Sullivan would not know humor if it ran after him to bite his tail, and Wazowski spent every second of his life thinking he was being funny.

Sullivan also turned and walked over to the little twit, and Randall soundlessly climbed down from his place atop that door to follow him. "Hey, Mikey, productive trip?"

Wazowski just stared at him with a half-lidded eye, and a second later, Sullivan, the guy with a negative backbone count, relented. "Frank dropped his plates onto himself. But don't worry, I'm sure Celia's gonna take care of everything!"

Wazowski rolled his eye as if he had never injured himself before. "Not _again_! I keep _telling_ him that these things are too dangerous! If that happens in the human world, then how's he gonna make his way back here?" Suddenly, he smiled. "But, yeah, productive trip. Look at that, another canister filled! I bet we're gonna run out of them soon!" He patted said canister as if it was a pet of some sort, and Randall noticed just now that it was abnormally large.

Sullivan chuckled, his definition of "funny" obviously tainted by his relationship to that little dunce. "I'll be keeping track of them, don't worry!"

Randall frowned at them. How _was_ he to dispose of them, he wondered? Maybe he could drop one of these canisters onto their heads? But, no, those things were too large; there was no way he could carry them on his own. Carrying heavy stuff was not something he was built for; that was a task for lesser people.

But before he could come up with something, his gaze had hit the Score Board, and he froze at the sheer blasphemy of what it now displayed. Instead of showing everyone's scores like it should, it was spouting nonsensical jokes and presenting stupid pictograms of smilies and people bashing each other with hammers.

Hey, he could use a hammer, he had just seen George Sanderson walk by with one. As well as a melon, so the canteen food must still be inedible. At least _something_ had stayed the same in this place.

Turning back around, he saw that Sullivan had left. Wazowski, on the other hand, was idly chatting with Bud Luckey as if they were equals. Apparently, he _still_ had not realized that most Scarers were completely out of his league; save for the worst imbeciles which had won their Scaring degrees in the lottery. Sometimes, Randall wanted nothing more than to stuff that oversized mouth.

And then he realized that that was actually the best course of action. He would kill two birds with one stone. Getting rid of Wazowski would cripple Sullivan completely. Sullivan was nothing, _nothing_, without Wazowski.

He knew most people did not see it that way, and he hated giving the little annoyance credit for it, but, of course, Randall was smarter than all of them, and he saw. He saw the way Sullivan could not do _anything_ without Wazowski telling him how it was done, and the way he sought out Wazowski whenever something happened which his brain was not capable of handling, which was always.

Take his Scaring Total, for example. Of _course_ a score would be higher if you used a single number to represent the efforts of two people, infinitesimal as those efforts might be in Wazowski's case. So it was not actually Sullivan's doing that he was always the best - or rather, he was not the best at all. In reality, he was openly cheating and no one ever bothered to call him out on it.

Wazowski had gone over to his station's control panel now to send the door back and call a new one, and Randall followed, briefly dodging Noodles Rivera's assistant who was walking past him carrying, for some reason, a large pie. Finally, he was right next to that simpleton, watching him bounce on his heels as he faintly hummed a tune to himself. There was not even half a meter between them.

It would be so easy to kill him. He could short-circuit something in the console so that Wazowski would be electrocuted on contact. He could find something poisonous and slip it into Wazowski's food at lunchtime. He could get one of the china shards and slit Wazowski's throat - wherever that _was_ in that spherical body of his. Or he _could_ just steal Sanderson's hammer when it was unused and hit Wazowski over the head with it.

Mentally going through all the different methods was incredibly satisfying. That would certainly teach them to mess with him!

He crept a little closer, still trying to decide what to settle for.

And then Mike turned around.

The action was so sudden, so entirely unexpected, that Randall took an involuntary step backwards. All at once, Mike seemed worried, and... no, not worried. Agitated. His eye darted around the room as if he was looking for something, and his mouth was forming two syllables that went unheard in the general loudness of his colleagues.

Randall just ogled him, unsure what to make of this abrupt change in demeanor.

Mike was still looking around the room, visually searching every nook and cranny, before finally, he was staring straight at Randall, giving him a sinking sense of unease, a dreadful certainty that he had been discovered, that he had missed his one chance at revenge simply due to his own hesitation.

But Mike turned away now, closing his eye and clutching his face with one hand. "Stop it," he murmured. "You're being an idiot."

For a second, Randall felt as if he had been the recipient of that statement, but Mike must have been talking to himself, for he just shook his head a little and quickly switched off his station before hurrying to the exit of the Scare Floor that was a Scare Floor no more.

Randall stared after him, unsure about what to do. Around him, silly idiots were still being loud about being unfunny, but his eyes never left the guy he had just been prepared to murder.

What was the point? It was not as if it would change anything. There was no way he was going to return to _this_, and he was above petty things like revenge anyway, especially if there was nothing to be gained from them.

The next time a door opened, Randall left. There was no place for him in a world like this.


End file.
